|
People have been solemnly warned that
the reason why smallpox has just broken out is because our
population is unvaccinated; yet Dr. Killick Millard complains
of primary vaccination as liable to make smallpox mild and
unrecognised, so that the element of danger lies in the
vaccinated! He has his excuse in the circumstance that
these have always started epidemics.
The Origin Of Vaccination
Why do people believe in vaccination?
Jenner's idea was based solely upon a
dairymaid's superstition. He sought to give it a scientific
air by calling cowpox (a disease which bears no analogy to
smallpox) variolae vaccinae -- i.e., smallpox of the cow.
The Latin name was not without its effect,
and anything that promised less harmful results than the prevailing
practice of the direct inoculation of smallpox matter (which
had been killing people by hundreds, and afterwards had to
be forbidden by Act of Parliament) was acceptable at the time
to the frightened and gullible population.
The rest was an affair of influence. When
once an error is accepted by a profession corporately and
endowed by Government, to uproot it becomes a herculean task,
beside which the entrance of a rich man into the Kingdom of
Heaven is easy.
The Compulsory Vaccination Act was passed
in 1853; a still more stringent one followed in 1867. And
between the years 1871 and 1880 there were 57,016 smallpox
deaths.
Compare this with the small number in
the present day, when considerably more than half the population
is unvaccinated, and when awful warnings are periodically
uttered about the decimating scourge always "bound to
come," which never arrives! Between 1911 and 1920 the
deaths numbered only 110.
Let us look at the most recent Annual
report of the Registrar-General -- the eighty-third. He states
that during the last 15 years 53 vaccinated persons have died
of smallpox.
In addition, there were 92 other deaths
of the "doubtful" class mentioned above; that is,
those declared by patients or friends to have been vaccinated,
but which have been entered by medical officials as "doubtful"
rather than take the slight trouble of searching the registers
for verification.
We may conclude, therefore, that there
were 145 cases of smallpox deaths in vaccinated persons in
this country during the last 15 years. And yet there were
only 78 unvaccinaed deaths during the same period.
Thus, the rate of vaccinated to unvaccinated
deaths is nearly two to one.
This is the more remarkable seeing that
during this same 15 years England has been largely unvaccinated,
probably to the extent of about 75 per cent.
Dangers Of Vaccination
But the tragedy of the whole sorry business
is this:
That during thc same 15-year period there
is recorded by the same authority the terrible toll of 165
deaths from "cowpox and other effects of vaccination!"
In short, vaccination not only failed to save 145 persons
from death, but actually killed another 165 in addition!
Hence, whereas 78 are alleged to have
died because the "preventive" had not been resorted
to, more than double that number died from the effects
of its use. What have the scaremongers who boast of the
"certain and harmless preventive" to say to this?
The only way, so far as I can see, that
those 165 poor little victims of the eighteenth century Gloucestershire
dairymaid's superstition were prevented from having smallpox
(if they were ever likely to get it) was in being killed by
the "preventive" before the disease could attack
them.
In some years more persons have been officially
certified as killed by vaccination than by smallpox. Besides
this, enormous numbers are left with some permanent disability,
a fact to which parents, at least, can testify. Meanwhile,
whenever smallpox comes, it is promptly and easily dealt with,
and fails to spread beyond a limited time and area.
Sanitation has practically banished
the disease, just as it banished black death, cholera,
and typhus. It would appear that vaccination, so far from
aiding, actually retarded the decline, for the Registrar-General
reported in 1880 that it was the only gross zymotic which
showed a rise in the death-rate -- that is, after 30 years
of compulsory vaccination.
The Gloucester Epidemic
The advocates of vaccination are never
tired of quoting the smallpox epidemic which occurred in Gloucester
in1895-6. A picture of Gloucester Cemetery is often presented,
apparently with the idea of impressing an ex parte statement
upon the memory.
Where the picture itself cannot be given,
the statement alone is made -- viz., that 279 unvaccinated
children lie buried in that cemetery (the picturesque detail
is never by any chance omitted), together with only one out
of some 8,000 children said to be vaccinated before or during
the epidemic.
The latter figure may be correct officially,
but it is incorrect actually, for I worked in Gloucester at
the time and came into personal contact with the cases, and
I have the names and addresses of 116 vaccinated children
up to ten years of age attacked by the disease, of whom 27
died.
The truth is that the whole child population
of Gloucester was practically an unvaccinated population,
the vaccinated numbering only 4 per cent.; hence the greater
number of unvaccinated attacked is easily explained. Ten thousand
unvaccinated children passed through that epidemic unscathed.
The severity of the scourge was due to
sanitary defects, which were afterwards remedied at
great cost, to the fact that the disease broke out and spread
like wildfire in a large unsanitary elementary school, where
the vaccinated teacher was the first to succumb, and to the
utterly disgraceful hospital conditions to which these little
patients were removed.
Out of the 1,979 total cases; about 1,750
occurred in the southern half of Gloucester, where the sanitary
defects above mentioned existed, the unvaccinated children
of time northern half escaping practically unscathed. Nearly
two-thirds of those attacked -- viz., 1,211 out of 1,979 --
were vaccinated, in spite of the fact that Gloucester was
an "unvaccinated city."
Germany And The Philippines
No European country has had such severe
vaccination laws as Germany. They started in 1834, and enforced
continual re-vaccinations. Yet in 1871-2 smallpox carried
off no fewer than 124,948 in Prussia alone. In Berlin itself
there were 17,038 vaccinated cases of smallpox, of whom 2,240
were under ten years of age, and of these vaccinated children
736 died.
A particularly interesting case is that
of the Philippines. When these islands fell into the hands
of the Americans a vast vaccination scheme was carried out,
and smallpox, which had naturally been a scourge among the
inhabitants owing to the bad sanitary conditions, declined
just in proportion as these were remedied.
The result was, of course, put down to
vaccination, though there is a certain humour in the circumstance
that, while the natives were suffering less from smallpox,
the vaccinated and re-vaccinated American soldiers fell victims
to it, dying at a percentage three times higher than that
which obtained among the unvaccinated people they had come
to instruct.
Of course, the usual thorough system of
cleansing, finding its parallel later in the Panama region,
was pursued, and for many years it was the great boast of
the disciples of Jenner that smallpox was banished from the
Philippines.
They boasted too soon.
Within the last few years, in spite of
the rigorous vaccination laws, the disease has regained its
old virulence, and there were no fewer than 60,612 cases and
43,294 deaths from smallpox in the Philippines during 1919
-- an enormous toll in a population of something under 11,000,000.
Whenever laxity in sanitation occurs,
it is clear that smallpox ignores vaccination, just as typhoid
fever ignored inoculation during the war under similar conditions.
The Americans, content with having once cleansed the Philippines,
no doubt shut their eyes to many unhygienic practices.
It is one thing to teach natives how to
live and start them on a right path, but quite another to
see that they keep to it. Vaccination, however, never suffers
neglect so long as medical officials are maintained for the
performance of the rite; and it is somewhat amusing to find
that the Filipinos, horror-stricken at the toll smallpox has
been taking, have attacked vaccination itself as the
originating cause which seems to them time most probable.
From "Truth,"
January 3, 1923
| 